


Don’t take your guns to town

by PacketofRedApples



Category: True Detective
Genre: can come off a little Rust/Crash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 15:46:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1693808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PacketofRedApples/pseuds/PacketofRedApples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If somebody was watching them, they would’ve noticed the differences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don’t take your guns to town

**Author's Note:**

> Some drabbles I collected over the months. I am frightened there might be a grammar mistake somewhere there....my apologies if there is.

They find themselves in some abandoned building, all in motion, so many people moving it becomes its own creature. Loud, loud, so fucking loud. With the flashing lights, it gives him a headache.   
Eventually, through the most-definitely-not sober crowd, Rust finds something his mind can’t quite wrap around, at least not in its drug induced state…the location was just so wrong.

  
The preacher has a lisp, wearing something unfitting yet completely right: large rings, a crimson-ish suit, can tell that even if the light is messing with him, hell he can even see the mildly unbuttoned shirt is pink. The cross necklace that hangs over his bare chest feels not nearly as repulsive as the one on the back of his jacket and given the emblem on his that’s saying a lot… 

  
When the preacher starts bringing people into the middle, yelling some absurd story, calling the female character a whore every occasion he got. He lines up some girls, a notably smaller amount of guys, and he starts barking like a dog about how god will forgive them and so on, so on. He then straightens up and tells them to hold hands, goes play healer.

Rust averts his eyes, looks for somebody from the gang he’s in. Somewhere in the crowd he spots one who loosely shrugs at him. The entire scene makes Crash’s skin crawl. Whatever he snorted wasn’t helping. 

Rust figured that in some ridiculous fashion, in Crash’s life he felt like he belonged…but now that feeling of rejection was back.

  
Feels insulting when the preacher out of his inability to heal a man, starts saying the woman in the chain have sinned. Shut the door to god for this man. 

  
Crash had only been here to sell drugs.

  
This place doesn’t need any.

  
When the ‘stage’ clears the preacher starts yelping some dumb shit, starts undressing. That’s the last straw. They leave.

*

 “We’re the same decaying matter as everything else, yet we pride ourselves as better. More evolved. Absolute bullshit. We’re just a mistake, went further than we should have.  Wild animals are more sophisticated than us; they only do what they’re supposed to—survive. But us… we say keep saying _evolved_ , like a fucking mantra, but look at us, man, we kill our own kind and work for happiness which is not why we’re here for. When it goes ‘round to it, we only see ourselves, like we’re the center of it all. We’re destroying everything around us for our own sick amusement. If anything, we’re degrading.” Rust says and takes a drag of his cigarette. Crash breathes out, smirking.

“God damn.” Crash says.

*

Crash lines up the empty packets of cigarettes that still somehow piled up. He puts them all with the warning labels facing up.

_Smoking Kills._

_Smoking can cause a slow and painful death._

_Your doctor and your pharmacist can help you stop smoking._

_Smoking seriously harms you and others around you._

Then Crash laughs. 

*

There is no particular care about it, he just happens to know that from where the biker club is at, that one night a meteor shower will be visible and he’d rather be there this one night than get drunk and get grinned against by some girl he’s never even seen before. Several of those occasions had his wallet go missing. 

So, bottle of whisky in hand, Rust wanders back into the makeshift parking lot and climbs into the back of his truck. He finds himself a comfortable spot and little sip by little sip drinks half of the bottle till all he can he feel is the line separating him and Crash.

 

*

Hot breaths against the skin form words in a voice like his, just more amused than he’ll ever give himself the right to be.

  
“Think you have a type, Rusty.”

  
“I don’t.” he spits back. However, doesn’t push Crash away. Lets his hands wander, both watching the blonde get dressed and leave. Just to keep up appearance. Just to be Crash. Doesn’t enjoy the entire process…leaves him with an odd feeling of dread and wrongness in his gut.

  
It’s all to get back on track, to pretend. So they wouldn’t spot a dent in the act.  


“Nah… I think you do.”

 

*

If somebody was watching them, they would’ve noticed the differences. Of course, nobody had interest to watch them. 

  
But even so, it would come off as watching them connect the dots. While Rust would thoroughly draw lines, making sure every number is correct and arrives at the intended image— Crash would disregard the numbers entirely and use them to make up the image he wanted. Whether that was a pin up or a skull depended on his mood.

*

Crash is not to be trusted on most occasions. A junkie in many ways, even with something as little as adrenalin. In reality, the reason for most their scars are Crash. He never tends to small cuts, brushes away blood and goes back to provoking.

  
Port of Houston becomes no surprise. Rust just gives in— he’s exhausted. Feeling things pull at him, gravity stronger than ever before. No longer holding him down, but pulling him, drained by a giant juicer that is the world.  
The surprise remains is that Crash gets on all fours and drags them out, with nails digging into the dirt. And they’re ripped and bleeding, and it stings, but doesn’t phase him.  
Mind like a drum, to his paper square brain, but is it his heart?

*

At school they complain that his hand is a tad shaky, that his handwriting is choppy and messy, not at all neat, illegible most of the time. As his father did nothing. As his father did nothing, an English teacher kept leaving him in detention where he copied texts, every off looking letter had him forced to redo everything. It wasn’t just writing, he was drawing too- horizontal straight lines, vertical straight lines, zigzag patterns. Repeat. Repeat.

  
Rust thinks of that looking at his sketch of the crime scene. Every single stroke of the pencil deliberate and knowing where to go. His eyes eventually shift.

There’s little scribbles here and there, all over his notes and drawing; all a jumbled mess. Most of its gibberish. Words, then doodles, then words, then doodles again. Rust tends to pay little mind to them, just names of places and people they know, logos and signs they've seen. Insults, complaints, snarky comments. Neither of them cross them out, even when Crash leaves  _'son of a bitch'_  repeatedly scrawled over the page, taking up every single spot on the side. 

So, it comes as a surprise when there’s something that was vigorously covered in lines of ink, ripped through the thin paper at one point, left an ugly mark on the one underneath. 

Rust, leans back into the office chair, picking up the ledger and flipping pages back, looking for the slightly off handwriting. Written with a shaky hand, lines quick, deep pressed, letters with sharp corners. 

Curiosity getting the better of him, he leans a little again, trying to avert his shadow, letting the lamp hit the ink pattern just right. Crash didn’t cross it out in the right direction, it only takes Rust several seconds to read what’s written there— ‘

*  
It comes in glimpses, like camera flashes and it comes in moments when he watches with interest, his mind hazes, spaces out, ends with him questioning if he really saw what he thinks. He knows he did. Knows it isn’t real. But in those moments he forgets if just for a second. 

  
He sits up on the mattress, smokes and gets up to get dressed before Marty makes a point to wake up and fucking piss him off. 

  
The image is in his peripheral vision— Crash, leather jacket and all, cigarette in hand standing in front of the small mirror, parody of what he was about to do. Taunting. When he turns to the direction, bastard’s gone.

  
Rust contemplates telling Marty that there’s someone else in the house


End file.
